CR pc gaming crew - advice needed

[gillbot]

Need advice, haven’t built a system since before the i7 2600k was king, so I’m seriously out of the loop. I’ve never been a gpu guy either and the craziest I had back when was a pair of 9800gx2’s in sli.

 

Santa picked up a dell laptop for my daughter for Christmas to do basic school work so I grabbed the 150ish Black Friday special, added an 8gb stick of ram plus ssd myself and it was good enough. My son got handed down her old asus zenbook which also got the same 8gb stick and ssd treatment so all was fine, until they wanted to game.

 

Daughter plays sims4 which seems ok but is choppy I’m guessing due to onboard hd graphics or just the shit cpu.

 

Son decides he wants to play scrap mechanic which I assume is Minecraft and anything can run it. Nope. It’s unplayable on the zenbook which is pretty stout aside from no gpu.

 

Rather than try to limp these along, they likely need replaced but a gaming system is not my forte. I was hoping to pick up a capable pair of laptops so they can’t fight over who got better but the requirements for scrap mechanic are absurd. Wondering if anyone has insight on a $300ish laptop than can handle it or a pre-built tower low cost I can pick up (and add a gpu if need be) that isn’t gonna break the bank for a dumbass game.

 

I was advised on another forum to look into the ryzen 3 2200g but building a system around that would likely run $400+ and at that I could get an old off lease i5 and toss in a decent gpu for likely less.

[ShowHBK]

Ok, so I help folks build systems all the time and this is the WORST time in the history of PC-Builders to recommend for anyone that they build a system... sadface.jpeg

 

GPU and RAM prices are out of control atm... so lets look in the pre-built sector.

 

I will be up front about this... there is no system out there right now that will have dedicated GPU for around $300-ish. Scrap Mechanic needs at lest a 8800GT to run (According to the minimum requirements, and most systems will have integrated graphics which in most cases are complete poop.

 

For scale, The Dell Outlet is a place where I normally go to buy nice priced refurbished systems and I was able to find you this Dell Inspiron 5000 with a dedicated AMD Radeon R7 M440 with 2GB of V-RAM for $450. The Benchmarks for that card show that it can barley run Team Fortress 2 at 720p... OUCH!

 

So, The Inspiron 5000 also comes in a gaming trim with some decent specs for ~$650 a pop on the outlet. One of the key things about the gaming trim is that is comes with a GTX 1050 which is a Pascal based GPU and a solid one at that. The GTX 1050 is the sweet spot for 720p gaming on the go showing FPS well above 50 in most games which you can see here. Honestly, If you want to avoid headaches down the line, I would spend the $1200-ish bucks on the Dell Outlet and get two of them. The system sacrifices on am amazing display, for better internal components. Here is a very good review of the device which is unbiased and on the level.

So, lets look at some Desktops. Woot.com (website is owned by Amazon) is selling an HP Omen that will do the trick for you at $599.99 with free shipping for Prime customers. Woot is kinda like Amazon's sellout area, or thats how I like to think of it. The desktop does not have a very good i5 Processor, but it has a GTX 1060 3GB GPU which will handle all your children's gaming without breaking a sweat. The tower is small form factor, and easy to hide if needed. One nice bonus is the 7200 RPM HDD, while it is not an SSD which I prefer in this day and age... the speed should load games and applications just fine.

 

If you are VERY sure you want to stick in your $350 budget range, then you will want to look at craigslist and pray that someone is just looking to get rid of their shit. I am not going to bother searching Craigslist because if you type in "gaming laptop" you basically get a bunch of overpriced systems that people feel are "GAMING" systems... *Deep Sigh*

 

Anyways, there are just a small portion of whats out there that can do some gaming for your kids. I would recommend searching the Dell outlet or Woot for your budget needs. ALWAYS try and get a dedicated GTX 1050 in a laptop for gaming and avoid the GTX 960M because it's not going to handle a lot of gaming fluidly at 720p. Let me know what you think and PM me with any questions you might have... happy hunting

Edited March 11, 2018 by ShowHBK
I suck at spelling

[Not Brian]

Craigslist has some decent towers sometimes, as long as people aren't autistic with their descriptions. Find something with an SSD, 16GB+ of DDR3 RAM (DDR4 would be nice, but is expensive), 450-650+ power supply unit (PSU), and a competent video card. The case doesn't need lights and stickers. Also factor in peripherals like a mouse, keyboard, speakers, and monitor etc. if you don't have any of that.

[ShowHBK]

Craigslist "gaming" PC in a nutshell

 

[unfunnyryan]

buy a hp z420 to z620 from ebay and put a gtx 1060 and ssd in it. Before GPU prices went craycray I had a friend do this build for $550.

 

they are a few generations behind on CPUs but you can get 8 core or pair of 8 core xeons in them hella cheap...GOOD NUFF

 

done

[gillbot]

I have no problem adding my own parts, but with the ‘tard gpu prices lately I was hoping to save a bit of coin sticking to a ddr3 based rig. I have a few ssds laying around and ddr3 is easier sourced than 4, that way the sting of an ok gpu wouldn’t be as bad. I was thinking prebuilt solely for the ease and win10 license out the door. Pop in ram, ssd and my own gpu and hope for the best. Luckily they’ll get hand me down 1280x1024 square monitors so no 1080p needed.

[Robochan]

I got a 2700K last year. Still rocking at 4.6GHZ.

[ShowHBK]

I have no problem adding my own parts, but with the ‘tard gpu prices lately I was hoping to save a bit of coin sticking to a ddr3 based rig. I have a few ssds laying around and ddr3 is easier sourced than 4, that way the sting of an ok gpu wouldn’t be as bad. I was thinking prebuilt solely for the ease and win10 license out the door. Pop in ram, ssd and my own gpu and hope for the best. Luckily they’ll get hand me down 1280x1024 square monitors so no 1080p needed.

 

welp, this changes things a little bit.

 

Buy this.... slap in a crap GPU and call it a day... Problem solved.

 

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-desktop-computers/inspiron-small-desktop/spd/inspiron-3252-small-desktop/fdcwgam313s

[Rally Pat]

I'll sell you my 3770 "non-K overclocked"/GTX 970 rig for what I consider a bargain if you're interested.

[gillbot]

I'll sell you my 3770 "non-K overclocked"/GTX 970 rig for what I consider a bargain if you're interested.

 

Depends on “bargain”. I’m cheaper than you think. :gabe:

 

welp, this changes things a little bit.

 

Buy this.... slap in a crap GPU and call it a day... Problem solved.

 

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-desktop-computers/inspiron-small-desktop/spd/inspiron-3252-small-desktop/fdcwgam313s

 

The i3 enough cpu?

[ShowHBK]

The i3 enough cpu?

 

Most always a game will want a quad core CPU, which this i3 is a dual core, with 4 threads which should be fine for lite gaming. I checked the system requirements for Scrap Mechanic and its minimum requirements specify a dual core or higher. Everything else you listed can run on a toaster so you should be fine. Staying within budget is always tough, but I hope the hunt for systems goes well for you.